T154.
Fragmented Inheritances: Lyric Essay and Intergenerational Trauma
Thursday, February 8, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
Lauded essayists discuss experiments with form, including fragmentary approaches to narrative, and how they leave space for both readers and writers to approach subject matter about difficult legacies. How does the use of fragments allow ways into incomplete or contested family and cultural narratives around war trauma; religious persecution; racial, sexual, and gender identity; and violence? How might fragmented narrative further the possibilities for sharing and transmuting difficult legacies?
Participants
Joanna Penn Cooper is the author of The Itinerant Girl's Guide to Self-Hypnosis and What Is a Domicile. Her current project is When We Were Fearsome, lyrical prose about motherhood, origins, and power. Joanna holds a PhD from Temple University and teaches at musewriting.com.
Kiki Petrosino is professor of poetry at the University of Virginia. She is the author of four books of poetry, including White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia and Witch Wife. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Literature.
James Allen Hall is the author of two books of poems, Romantic Comedy (Four Way Books, 2023) and Now You’re the Enemy (2008). They also authored a book of lyric essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well. They teach at Washington College and direct the Rose O'Neill Literary House.
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of three collections of poetry including Cultish (Four Way Books, Finalist for the NBCC), a memoir, Antiman (finalist for the PEN Open Book Award), and a collection of translations, I Even Regret Night (Kaya Press, winner of the HMLTA from the Academy of American Poets).
